Anne Jno Baptiste, a native New Yorker in her 90s, has lived in Dominica since 1961. When I visit her at her Papillote Wilderness Retreat, which became the first ecolodge in the country when it opened in 1969, she asks: “Where else would I go?” It’s hard to argue with her after taking in the surroundings: an expanse of begonias, hibiscus, bromeliads, wild ginger, and orchids blooming in the shade of calabash, breadfruit, and tree ferns. Denroy Davis, my Jamaican guide for the Indian River (the filming location for Calypso’s house in Pirates of the Caribbean), tells me he stayed because of Hurricane Maria, out of admiration for the spirit of the people here. As we glide up the river under a canopy of imposing bwa mang trees, he nods at the ruins of a railway bridge, a victim of time and elemental turbulence. After we pass, he shows me how, in the years since Maria, new saplings have risen to line the curve of murky water like sentinels.
I trek to Victoria Falls with Nahgie Laflouf, a Dominican of Syrian heritage who has hiked the island’s mountains and swum in its rivers since he was 11. Later he takes me into Salybia, a hamlet in the northeast, where an Indigenous healer, Mabrika, performs a cleansing ceremony on me beside the picturesque Isulukati Waterfall. On our way back, we stop to buy some mangoes at The Farmacy, run by Ron Mello, a fashion model who left New York in 2008. He offers everything from roasted breadfruit to snake oil. After rising languidly from the spot where he has been sorting coffee beans, he leads us to the back of his property, where he has built lodgings into the slopes, just as the Kalinago did centuries ago. Before I leave, he sells me some bwa bandé, a tree bark thought to be an aphrodisiac.
Perhaps because of the cleansing ceremony, I feel energized. While driving across the island to catch a reggae performance on Mero Beach, I have a sudden urge to climb a coconut tree, the way I used to during my childhood in Accra. At the beach, I’m listening to the musicians warming up and admiring the rainbow framing the sunset when an invite from Armour pops up on my phone: a party the next day at Batibou Beach.
Leave a Reply